


The Eagle Standard

by sparklight



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Drama & Romance, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Consensual Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: There are princes taken for such woes as women knows after a city has fallen in war, for the beauty of youth may inflame just the same.In a version of the past where the Olympians are leaders among the Achaean people, Troy struggles against invaders... and loses one of its most treasured princes, not to death, but to enemy hands.
Relationships: Ganymede/Zeus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	The Eagle Standard

**Author's Note:**

> I vastly prefer a more or less consensual and reciprocal interpretation for Ganymede and Zeus, and I'm not much for no powers/all human AUs because that's boring, but I found a late Classical Latin writer who wrote some philosophical allegories of the myths and this idea wouldn't go away. Ganymede's kidnapping is turned into a spoils of war situation and the eagle is a battle standard and since I'm always here for spoils of war, here we are. I entirely blame Fabius Fulgentius and his Mythologies for this.

Ganymede had not truly expected to last very long when he'd been obliged to arm himself and join the battle against the Achaean horde. Hunting he could do, but against human foes his thoughts turned to knots in how to best defend himself; too slow, too careful, too _thoughtful_. His father had told him to remain in the chariot, to take advantage of fleet horses and the protection of speed and a physical barrier, had told him to not take spears, but wield his bow.

He'd done as King Tros had commanded; he'd used his bow and arrows, and he hadn't left the chariot.

At least he hadn't until his charioteer had been taken by a spear and he'd barely had the time to grab the reins before the uneven, corpse-strewn ground upended the chariot, sending both horses and prince crashing to the ground. The horses screamed, and Ganymede, right before he hit the ground and heedlessly rolled, knew their legs had been broken. They were good horses, and he felt sorry for them, but it wasn't a thought that lingered long. His breath driven out of him with the impact, he bounced once, only saved from his head caving in when he slammed head-first into a large rock by his helmet.

" _Shit_ \---!" Groaning, he rolled up on his elbows, his vision swimming as it slowly settled and head ringing, unable to see much of anything - the dent the rock had made had driven the rim of the helmet lopsided and down over one side of his face. Taking off the helmet might be a death-sentence. _Not_ taking off the helmet was tantamount to the same, when he wouldn't be able to avoid any attacks that he couldn't see. He struggled with the straps of the helmet and tossed it away just as a spear came down. Rolling to the side, wide-eyed as the spear drove into the ground far too close to his head for comfort, Ganymede struggled to his feet. He wasn't quick enough to avoid the huge hand that snatched him up, trapped him against the inside of a shield.

It would have been easy to kill him, like that.

There was a sword pressed against the unprotected hollow of his throat, for he'd forewent the heavier panoply armour for lighter mail, and the gleam of sunlight on bronze nearly blinded him before a shadow fell over him. The sword wasn't moving. His heaving breath was making the wicked point scrape against his throat, but the sword was otherwise not moving. Bewildered, Ganymede looked up, squinting against the sunlight just barely glittering above the edge of the standard that'd thrown the shadow over him and the warrior about to kill him, and met gray eyes cast into dark shadow by the edge of the helmet the man wore.

"Um..." Nothing else came out, the words drying up with his throat, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, as much for the heavy, piercing stare as for the realization of what was painted on the banner still affording them shadow from the punishing sun.

An eagle.

Ganymede glanced up at it again, fluttering in a gentle spring breeze and making the eagle seem to fly against the blue sky, then slowly looked back down. Still _up_ , for all that he was tall among his people; the man aiming his sword at his throat was taller still, broad and tall like Mount Ida herself, it seemed like. His short, dark beard was spattered with mud and blood, but his mouth wasn't caught in the snarl or vicious smirk Ganymede would have expected it to be. It was surprisingly soft, revealing it sweetly generous - not a word he would have thought to apply to the Achaeans' high king and greatest general.

Because that was the only one this man could be, sporting an eagle on his banner and probably on his shield. It wasn't like Ganymede could see to confirm the latter, pressed against the inside curve of it as he was, trapping him between the shield and the armoured chest of King Zeus. Still the sword didn't move, and Ganymede, slowly, frowned. Glanced down to the bloody bronze length angled between them, feeling the sharp tip of it pressing in against his throat but no further, and back up. Licking his dry lips and taking a deep, shuddering breath, trying to ignore the way those gray eyes darkened as they followed the track of his tongue and stayed on his lips as he finally found his words again.

"Are you going to kill me any time soon, or take me hostage for the rich treasure my father will be willing to give for my return? I should think we're starting to look ridiculous."

Gray eyes widened, then narrowed, and Ganymede stuck his chin out, expecting death this time. Around them, men moved, though a couple were standing with spears and swords at the ready to keep any surprises away from their king, and Ganymede wasn't particularly reassured to know he was now firmly behind enemy lines. But he wasn't yet dead, and if he got the chance to reveal who he was (which might have been a surer thing if he hadn't spoken out of turn), then he might yet see the inside of Troy's walls again. The sword disappeared, heavily re-sheathed with a thump against the scabbard, and Ganymede opened his mouth, about to reveal what should hopefully save him, what he needed to to hopefully ensure both spear and sword _stayed away_ from his very vulnerable body.

Breath and words both choked up into a startled gasp when the rough hand which had held the sword grabbed his chin instead, yanking his face up. A thumb rubbed away the mud that'd coated his chin and cheek when he was flung from the chariot, rough at first, then gentler. A caress, almost, and that wasn't a fit action for a _battlefield_. Or at all, by an enemy!

"What---"

"Demand ransom and then have to go through the effort of razing the city to get you back, when I could take you to my tent and then take all the other treasures of Troy I might want?" the king's voice was a slow, dark rumble, thoughtful almost as he tilted Ganymede's face this way and that, and suddenly Ganymede was a lot less afraid of dying than he was of the implication of other sorts of swords eager for his flesh. The king's fingers on his chin weren't cruel so much as they were firm, denying him any chance to look away, though that was a tricky prospect regardless; he felt as speared by the look in those pale eyes as he might have been by the sword the Achaean lord had sheathed.

"You can't just---" Even just talking was hard, as firm of a grip as Zeus had on his chin, and he silenced Ganymede by harshly shaking his head for him.

"I _can't_?" Danger, there, and Ganymede swallowed, staring wide-eyed up at the man. Grunted, startled, when the shield arm pushed into his back and he was pressed flush against the broad chest. The king was truly a monster of a man, as tall as he was, outstripping anyone around them. "I think what I _can't_ do is waste youthful beauty as this, Prince Ganymede. I'd heard the tales, of course, but it seemed to me they would have to be greatly exaggerated. I see they were not."

The thumb was gentle again, and Lord Zeus shifted his grip so it could brush over Ganymede's lips. Hot, nervous breath puffed against the calloused thumb, and Ganymede, one hand squashed between them, tried to push against his chest. It was like trying to move the walls of Troy.

"That--- that's not..." Flushing, against himself and because of the touch as well as the words, Ganymede floundered for something to say, something to do - anything that would make more sense than this, than the half-shielded stare that seemed to be stripping him bare despite both armour and clothes in the way. He wasn't unfamiliar with that sort of praise or the lust, but it seemed utterly ridiculous that it should matter here, right in the middle of battle. "You and your men would be better served by demanding ransom, my lord. My father will give much---mf!"

The cheek pieces of Zeus' helmet cut into his own smooth, bare, _unguarded_ cheek as he was kissed, tasting bronze, blood and liquid heat. He couldn't move; the hand on his chin was too firm, and the tongue in his mouth was too much. Ganymede's knees wavered, and he would later insist surprised reflex was what had him even attempting to kiss back, and that the heat of battle was what made his body surge.

His flailing left hand, free where his right was not, landed on the hilt of the king's sword. He gripped it, awkward due to the angle, and yanked it out. Well, halfway. Laughter, loud and incredulous, was first swallowed by the kiss and then rang in the air as the king pulled back and swiftly gripped his hand, twisting until Ganymede let go of the sword with a flinch and a breathless whine, quickly smothered in his embarrassment.

"No ransom would be worth what I can get from you, my prince," Zeus said as he snatched both of Ganymede's wrists in one hand, squeezing until the boy flinched again, "so I believe I'll take you much like I'll be taking the rest of Troy's treasures; as my due as spoils of war."

A look wandered over his body, though there wasn't much bare skin to see with greaves and the fall of tunic, the armour that covered his forearms; Ganymede still felt bare and flushed again, though any protest he might have intended scattered as the king let go, shoving him forward into the waiting chest and arms of one of the warriors lingering around the eagle standard.

"Take him back, _unharmed_. If anyone touches him I'll have their head."

A chariot came up, and by the eagle painted to the side of it, it must be the king's, too. But it wasn't the king who got into it, but rather Ganymede and the warrior yanking him up into it, to get him back to the Achaean camp as quickly and safely as possible. Ganymede tried to struggle, though while this man was actually a little shorter than the prince, he was stronger and knew what he was doing; a foot hooked around one of Ganymede's and an arm around his chest trapped both of Ganymede's arms there, and it didn't matter how he tried, he was stuck.

As the charioteer set the horses off into a gallop, Ganymede watched the fluttering eagle standard mark the Achaean warlord's position and progress on the battlefield, and beyond that, on a hill that grew all the more distant by the second, Troy's walled citadel. Swallowing against his dry mouth and a whisper of unsettling wooziness probably from knocking his head on that rock when he'd fallen off the chariot, Ganymede had the sinking feeling that would be the last he'd see of his home.


End file.
